1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a wireless local area network (WLAN) system, and more particularly, to a channel sounding procedure between stations (STAs) in the WLAN system and an apparatus for supporting the procedure.
2. Related Art
With the advancement of information communication technologies, various wireless communication technologies have recently been developed. Among the wireless communication technologies, a wireless local area network (WLAN) is a technology whereby Internet access is possible in a wireless fashion in homes or businesses or in a region providing a specific service by using a portable terminal such as a personal digital assistant (PDA), a laptop computer, a portable multimedia player (PMP), etc.
The IEEE 802.11n is a technical standard relatively recently introduced to overcome a limited data rate which has been considered as a drawback in the WLAN. The IEEE 802.11n is devised to increase network speed and reliability and to extend an operational distance of a wireless network. More specifically, the IEEE 802.11n supports a high throughput (HT), i.e., a data processing rate of up to above 540 Mbps, and is based on a multiple input and multiple output (MIMO) technique which uses multiple antennas in both a transmitter and a receiver to minimize a transmission error and to optimize a data rate.
With the widespread use of the WLAN and the diversification of applications using the WLAN, there is a recent demand for a new WLAN system to support a higher throughput than a data processing rate supported by the IEEE 802.11n. A next-generation WLAN system supporting a very high throughput (VHT) is a next version of the IEEE 802.11n WLAN system, and is one of IEEE 802.11 WLAN systems which have recently been proposed to support a data processing rate of above 1 Gbps in a MAC service access point (SAP).
The next-generation WLAN system supports the transmission of a Multi-User Multiple Input Multiple Output (MU-MIMO) scheme in which a plurality of non-AP STAs accesses a radio channel at the same time in order to efficiently use the radio channel. According to the MU-MIMO transmission scheme, an AP can transmit a frame to one or more MIMO-paired STAs at the same time.
The AP and the plurality of MU-MIMO paired STAs may have different capabilities. In this case, a supportable bandwidth, modulation coding scheme (MCS), forward error correction (FEC), etc., may vary depending on an STA type, usage, channel environment, etc.
In the WLAN system, an AP and/or an STA can acquire information on a channel to be used to transmit a frame to a reception target AP and/or STA. This can be performed by using a channel sounding procedure. That is, a process in which a transmitter requests a receiver to send channel information to be used for frame transmission and reception and the receiver estimates a channel and feeds back channel information thereof to the transmitter can be performed before transmitting and receiving a data frame. Meanwhile, since the next generation WLAN system employs a wider channel bandwidth and a MU-MIMO transmission scheme, a more amount of channel information can be received from a transmission target AP and/or STA. In order to transmit a more amount of feedback information, the transmission target AP and/or STA needs to access to a channel for a longer period of time. When interference occurs in a part of the feedback information transmitted and received during this period, there is a need to discard whole feedback information and thus new feedback information is necessary. This may cause deterioration in terms of efficiency of resource usage and reliability of a channel sounding procedure. Accordingly, there is a need for a channel sounding method capable of solving the aforementioned problem in a next generation WLAN system.